


Islington

by Clarensjoy



Series: General: Post Canon [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon-Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Grimmauld Place, One-Shot, Seventh year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25515046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarensjoy/pseuds/Clarensjoy
Summary: Ron and Harry introduce Hermione and Ginny to their greatest discovery.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Series: General: Post Canon [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903465
Comments: 11
Kudos: 80





	Islington

‘It’s our greatest discovery, this place. Close to Grimmauld, full of muggles, good food and not too expensive either,’ Ron said, walking backwards on the street, unaware of the dirty looks being cast his way by people walking the opposite way and veering out of his path.

‘Well you boys have been busy, putting those auror skills to work obviously,’ Ginny said, raising her eyebrows at Ron and then glancing at Harry out of the corner of her eye, whose lips twitched in amusement.

‘Sod off Ginny, you don’t know how hard it was to find a place that checked all those boxes- you’ll never know the pain- ‘

Ron dramatically threw one arm over his eyes, but in the process he finally crashed into a muggle, who swore rather impressively at him. Harry, Hermione and Ginny did their best to pretend that they didn’t know him.

He jogged back up to them and laced his fingers in Hermione’s, ‘Muggles are an angry lot you know that?’

‘Muggles? I’d no idea, All the ones I’ve met are charming,’ Harry said.

‘I think it’s just that you’re unusually happy, so anyone would seem angry next to you right now, Ron,’ Ginny offered.

‘Yes, what on earth has you so happy?’ Hermione asked, looking up at him.

‘What? I haven’t seen you in bloody weeks Hermione! Of course I’m happy. And I suppose it’s nice to see my sister too,’ he finished, rolling his eyes.

Hermione beamed and blushed, quite pleased with that response, and reached up to place a kiss on his cheek. A passerby tutted in their direction.

‘Alright, that’s sweet and all, but are we going to be walking for much longer? Harry and I went on a run yesterday and he absolutely killed me. That auror training is something else,’ Ginny grumbled, rubbing her thighs with her hands.

Harry let out a bark of laughter and replied, ‘It’s just onto Dagmar here,’ he indicated the street sign that was planted on the corner of the road, ‘and then one street up. But I can give you a lift if you want, I feel fine,’ he said, winking at her.

Ginny swatted his arm. ‘Just wait until I start quidditch, we’ll see who needs to be carried then.’

The walk from Grimmauld place was not far, and not entirely unpleasant. The old house was situated in a part of Islington that had clearly once been very affluent, but had become somewhat run-down in recent years. As the group progressed to the restaurant the houses became grander, the streets cleaner and the people more plentiful.

Finally, they turned onto the street where most of the restaurants resided. Here, the road was it’s busiest; throngs of people walked up and down and in-between cars. They had scheduled for a late lunch, and already the pubs were filling up and shouts and laughter echoed down the street.

They joined the flowing crowd, passing window after window of boutique shops, small cafés or bustling pubs. The street was a bit of a tourist trap too, and the four of them heard a range of accents as they passed people looking into shop windows, gasping and chattering on the pavement.

As they passed restaurants, Ron would explain the horrible mistake that resulted in each being struck from their list of regular haunts.

‘Harry had to dig into his vault money to pay for that meal.’

‘All the food was French!’

‘We think the owner is a wizard, sold a picture to the Daily Prophet’ (‘Oh! That’s where they got the photograph for the dating scandal article!)

‘Too close to the pub, lots of drunk blokes hanging about.’

‘Merlin don’t get me started on this one!’

Finally, Harry and Ron stopped them outside the front of a restaurant that Hermione and Ginny both thought did not look especially different to the other ones that Ron had so harshly dismissed. It was a brick face building, with large windows on either side of its main door, squashed between an ice cream parlour and a second-hand bookstore. The letterhead above the gleaming black doors displayed the name: _The Archer_.

‘I like it,’ Ginny said as they all stared at the front of the restaurant for a bit, humouring Ron and Harry who had excited looks on their faces.

‘It is nice,’ Hermione said, then her eyes slipped over to the green fronted bookstore next to the restaurant, ‘Do you think-?’

‘-After lunch, Hermione, see I told you it was perfect. The bookstore is not there on accident,’ Ron said, opening the door and gesturing for the girls to go in.

‘Is that in Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches?’ Harry said to Ron as he stepped through the doorway into the restaurant, Ron stuck out a foot to trip him up, but Harry nimbly hopped over it, not missing Ron’s mutterings behind him.

The inside of the restaurant was bright and welcoming, some of the walls were so covered with old photographs and posters that no actual wall could be seen. The front door led them into a small lobby room where a greying man was speaking to Hermione and Ginny. All three of them turned when Harry and Ron joined them.

‘Ron and Harry! You lads didn’t tell me that you had such an attractive pair of birds!’ he turned to whisper loudly to Hermione and Ginny, ‘You girls really can do better, for instance, restaurant owners do very well for themselves,’ he said, smoothing his hair over with his hand.

‘I wonder what Winnie would have to say about that, Neil,’ Harry said, then grasped the man’s hand with his, greeting him.

‘Way too old as well, mate,’ Ron said, drawing up the group.

‘Watch it, ginger,’ Neil said, pointing a finger at Ron but then gesturing for the two couples to follow him.

They were led to a corner table, that bordered a window and a wall covered with old newspaper articles from the Islington Chronicle, Neil bowed dramatically as he left, promising a waiter to attend to them soon.

‘He’s an old codger,’ Ron said as they settled in their seats and a waiter placed menus on the table. Hermione laughed at his assessment and shook her head.

‘He reminds me a bit of Sluggy, you know, the type of confidence that only an old man who’s desperate to please everyone he meets has,’ Ginny said, looking around the restaurant, placing her jacket on the back of the chair.

The restaurant was quite full, and it was a testament to the relationship that Harry and Ron had built with the manager that they had cinched a corner table for the Saturday lunch hour. The waiter seemed to know them well too. A young man, probably around the same age as the four of them, called Marco.

‘You’ve broken my heart today,’ the young waiter said as he scribbled down their drink’s order.

‘We told you we had girlfriends, Marco,’ Harry said, chuckling.

‘I didn’t want to believe it, and now it’s doubly sad because everyone around me is in a relationship, and here I am, the sad sod waiting their tables,’ Marco sniffed, then left their table in an exaggerated strop.

‘Didn’t Harry tell you? Marco asked him out the first time we ate here, it was pretty awkward being served by him the whole time after,’ Ron said, when he noticed Ginny’s confused expression.

‘Harry! You didn’t tell me someone hit on you!’ Ginny exclaimed, looking between Ron and Harry. The she realized that Hermione hadn’t said anything either and her mouth opened wider. ‘You knew too! Well this is news!’

‘Gin, I didn’t think it’s the same you know- ‘

‘Just because it’s a bloke doesn’t mean it’s any different, you tell me next time something like this happens.’

Harry grinned, ‘Well, I actually have a bit of a backlog then, there was this bloke when Ron and I went to the pub last week, and then...’ Harry started, counting on his fingers.

‘Harry!’ Ginny struggled to sound angry through her laughter.

They pored over the menus for quite a long time. Ron and Harry had been to the restaurant often enough- despite being decent cooks, they rarely had the energy to step into the kitchen- that they had tried almost every meal, and they gave detailed descriptions of each sauce, and how the meat was cooked and if the soup was too salty and how big the portions were. Ginny and Hermione had been quite overwhelmed by the time it came to order.

They were already into a second bottle of wine between the four of them when their food arrived. As the pressure of placing all your cards on one dish was so great, the four of them had agreed to order four dishes that sounded nice, and then split up the meals so that everyone could try some.

‘This. Is. Amazing.’ Ginny said, when she took the first bite of The Archers house pizza. ‘Though, that could be because I skipped breakfast for this meal the way you two hyped it up.’

‘No, it’s perfect,’ Hermione had agreed, also with a mouthful of the pizza.

The unanimous decision was that the best dish had been the steak and kidney pie- flaky, golden pastry and filled to the brim with meat- the basic burger had been nice too- the open sandwich, with pulled pork, had been hit or miss.

‘How does it compare to Hogwarts food then?’ Ron asked when their plates had been cleared, very hastily by Marco, who Ginny had been eyeing the whole time.

‘I think it’s at least on par, bonus points for the company,’ Ginny said, running a hand through Harry’s hair.

‘As good as your mum’s?’ Harry asked.

‘No!’ both Ginny and Ron shouted, then looked around sheepishly as several of the other diners turned their heads towards them.

‘You’d think you two were being recorded,’ Hermione said, amused.

‘It’s happened before, believe us,’ Ron breathed out, holding his hands up.

They stayed a while longer in the restaurant, discussing the girls’ year at Hogwarts, the ins and outs of auror training. They watched the other people in the restaurant, made up stories about them and tried to guess which ones were also wizards (definitely the woman in the bottle green dress and feathered fedora hat).

They invited Marco to sit with them for a while, and despite Ginny’s initial wariness of him, the two ended up just staring at Harry and talking about the things they liked about his face- much to Harry’s embarrassment and Ron and Hermione’s entertainment.

Neill stopped by to thank them for coming before they left and walked them out of the restaurant and onto the street where the light had taken on a honeyed golden hue, casting long shadows, and the volume of noise coming from the pubs had increased considerably.

Families that had walked on the pavement when they had arrived had changed into herds of teenagers trying to get into the bars with fake IDs and young adults that were eager to kick off the weekend with a pint.

‘Dessert?’ Ron asked, as they walked past the ice cream shop that was serving it’s last customers of the day. They all eagerly agreed, and entered the small shop, barely larger than the receiving room of _The Archer._

They perused the shelves of the second-hand bookstore after, cups of ice cream in hand. Hermione had been delighted when she found several books that she remembered from her childhood, Ron had joined her on one of the old squashy couches to read through them.

Harry and Ginny found a collection of old school textbooks that had belonged to the same student.

‘”This book is the property of Hubert Pollock”,’ Ginny said, throwing on a pompous accent. She flipped the front page over to show the title. ‘Macbeth. Hm let’s see…’

She flipped through the book. Harry watched her eyes rover over the words, looking for the perfect passage to act out. He realised, in watching her, how much he had missed her, the way she made him laugh, the glint of mischief in her eyes.

Those eyes suddenly lit up. ‘Ooh Harry, there’s witches in this story, come here, you can be the second witch I’ll be the first and third.’

Harry humoured her and took the last spoonful of his ice cream, then vanished the cup discreetly with his wand. He moved to look over her shoulder, waiting for her to start. She looked up at him. ‘You have to be serious, okay?’

‘Gin, I don’t think I’ve ever been more serious about anything in my life,’ Harry said, impressing even himself when his expression managed to stay neutral.

Ginny arched an eyebrow then returned to the book, ‘Round about the cauldron go;  
In the poison'd entrails throw…’

They were thrown out of the bookstore when Harry and Ginny’s laughter reached the wheezing and shrieking stage, when there was not really any air in their lungs to create a laugh, so they stood clutching their stomachs and doing a rather impressive impersonation of a seal.

‘You two are lucky I was able to go in and pay for my books!’ Hermione said as she emerged from the bookstore, glancing down the street as she stuffed the books into her impossibly small bag.

Harry and Ginny were still working off their mirth. ‘Sorry Hermione,’ Ginny wheezed, holding onto Harry who held up a hand lamely. He was shaking his head and mumbling.

‘It shouldn’t be this funny,’ he said, hands on his knees, ‘but Gin- ‘he looked up at her and then broke out into another fit of laughter.

Ron shook his head and moved to throw an arm over Hermione’s shoulders, they started to walk back down the street, ambling their way slowly and languidly.

Harry and Ginny eventually managed to follow suit, and the two couples walked back to Grimmauld place in a lovely haze- full of good food, whispering to one another and occasionally shouting to the other couple across the distance between them.

When they reached Grimmauld Place, the sky was a beautiful display of pinks and oranges. Ron and Hermione reached the doorstep first and turned to wait for Harry and Ginny.

‘So? What did you think?’

Hermione and Ginny shared a glance, and then both turned to face the boys. Hermione answered their question.

‘We think it's a brilliant discovery.'


End file.
